Much Ado About Dogs

09/11/2026

“Let’s see if he’ll do it.”

It sounds harmless enough, and sometimes it’s exactly the right thing to do. At some point, we do need to know whether the training is actually holding up.

But there’s a difference between training a behaviour and testing it.

Training is where we build the behaviour, strengthen it and gradually reduce the support around it. Testing is where we ask whether it can now stand up on its own.

The problem is that we often move into testing too early, then blame the dog when it falls apart.

That might mean unclipping the long line because recall has been going well, moving a reactive dog closer to a trigger “to see how they do”, or suddenly expecting a place command to survive far more distraction than the dog has ever practised.

This month’s Dog House looks at why that distinction matters, how to make training harder without turning it into a gamble, and why good trainers are often far more conservative than they first appear.

Read it here:

There is a phrase I hear quite often in dog training: “Let’s see if he’ll do it.”Sometimes that is exactly the right thing to do. At some point, after all, we do need to find out whether the behaviour we have been working on actually holds up when the support starts to disappear. The problem...

08/11/2026

When they get a dog, many people look forward to taking them to a cafe or a pub for a relaxing drink.

But for many, maybe even most, that dream quickly becomes a nightmare because their dog is barking at everything, unable to settle and generally feeling overwhelmed by the situation and the experience.

Like many behaviours, building neutrality in social and shared spaces often takes time and practice. It’s no good rocking up to a pub at 3 PM on the day of the cup final with a dog that hasn’t experienced that environment before and expecting them to be fine.

Odds are they won’t.

And if your dog isn’t relaxed, you won’t be relaxed either and you’re likely to stress each other out.

More often than not, the road to neutrality is travelled with baby-step not huge leaps. If you go at the speed of your dog, not the speed of your occasion, you are more likely to succeed.

If you want to learn more, please get in touch!

05/11/2026

Is this dog doing anything wrong?

He’s at the end of the lead.
There is some tension there.
He’s not showing any engagement with the handler.

So, is he doing anything wrong?

The answer depends on what exactly you have asked the dog to do.

Clearly, if you’ve asked him for a “sit” then he’s not listening to you.
If you’ve asked for a nice “heel” then you are not on the same wavelength.

But equally, if you’ve not asked the dog to do anything then the answer is no.
Equally, if the dog is confused by what you’re asked him, then I’d argue he’s also not doing anything wrong.

If “wrong” means doing not what you’ve asked, then you need to be very sure that the dog understands exactly what you want.

Communication is at the heart of dog training, because if you cannot communicate with your dog, then you are always going to struggle.

In this specific case, I had given Mutley a “break” command (essentially “go be a dog”) which is why his nose is on the ground and he has moved away from me. 10 seconds earlier, he was walking nicely to heel.

02/11/2026

With Bonfire Night approaching, this is probably worth saying:

If your dog is genuinely frightened by fireworks, the evening itself is not the time to see how much they can tolerate.

Sometimes the right answer is simply management.

Close the curtains. Add some background noise. Walk earlier if you can. Give the dog somewhere safe to settle. Keep them indoors once fireworks are likely to start.

Longer-term training may well help, but there is a big difference between training at a level the dog can cope with and trying to work through unpredictable explosions outside the house.

Management isn’t giving up on training.

Sometimes it’s just making a sensible decision about what your dog needs today.

If you find this kind of practical dog-training advice useful, follow Much Ado About Dogs for more.

28/10/2026

Halloween can be a particularly strange evening if you’re a dog.

The doorbell keeps going. People who don’t normally come to the house suddenly appear outside wearing masks, hats and costumes. Children are running around making noise. The front door opens repeatedly and there may be sweets and food everywhere.

For some dogs, none of this will be a problem.

For others, it’s quite a lot to deal with.

If you already know your dog gets worked up when somebody comes to the door, Halloween probably isn’t the evening to see whether they can cope with twenty repetitions of it.
Use the tools you have.

Put the dog behind a gate. Use a lead. Give them somewhere quiet to settle. Move them away from the front window if watching people arrive winds them up. If they are crate-trained and happy in there, there is nothing wrong with letting them spend part of the evening away from the action.

You can train door behaviour on plenty of other days.

Also, consider walking them earlier in the evening, before the ghosts and ghouls come out.

And, please don’t try scaring your dog for the sake of social media clicks. It happens. It’s dumb and dangerous.

Sometimes the sensible thing is simply to make an unusual evening easier for the dog.

If you find this kind of practical dog-training advice useful, follow Much Ado About Dogs for more.

20/10/2026

Take a look at this image. Would you let your dog off the lead here?

If you answered “no”, that is the correct answer for most people. There are two visible pathways on the right with limited visibility, not to mention an open grassy area which is also largely hidden. There is also a concealed pathway up on the left side.

The point being that you don’t have full visibility so you don’t know what might be around the corner.

There maybe another dog there.
There maybe a young child there or someone who is afraid of dogs
Maybe someone with mobility issues or a jogger or cyclist.

And since most dog charge off like idiots when the lead is removed, it’s not hard to imagine the mess that might follow.

If you cannot see what your dog is running into, you risk setting them up to fail. But people do this everyday without thinking.

The smarter course of action is to move further down the path where you can exactly what is going on.

And if you answered “yes”, that’s fine IF you have solid off-lead control which is not the case with most dogs.

19/10/2026

As the evenings get darker, don’t be too surprised if your dog occasionally behaves differently on a familiar walk.

From our point of view, nothing has changed. Same street. Same park. Same route.

But to a dog the environment might actually looks quite different.

People appear later and closer. Bikes, runners and other dogs can be harder to spot. Shadows change things. What was obvious from 30 metres away in daylight might suddenly appear from the gloom at 10.

For some dogs that makes very little difference. For others it can make them noticeably more watchful or reactive.

If that happens, don't panic. It doesn’t necessarily mean the dog has suddenly gone backwards.

Give them a bit more space and time, help them work things out and remember that familiar places can feel rather less familiar once the lights go down. Stay calm and assist them through the challenge.

If you find this kind of practical dog-training advice useful, follow Much Ado About Dogs for more.

12/10/2026

I know, I know. It’s October and I’m already talking about Christmas.

But that’s rather the point.

For our dogs, Christmas can mean a lot of change arriving in a very short space of time: visitors, different routines, more food around, children, doors opening and closing and, of course, somebody suddenly putting a tree in the living room.

A little preparation now can make all of that much easier later.

The latest Dog House article looks at some of the things worth thinking about before December arrives - from introducing the Christmas tree gradually, to practising visitor routines, helping your dog settle while the house is busy and deciding when giving them some space is actually the best option.

I’ve also included the core skills I think are particularly useful to work on before Christmas.

If you think you need some help preparing you dog for Christmas, then please get in touch. I'd love to help you out.

Have a read here:

Every year, Christmas seems to arrive rather suddenly.Obviously it doesn’t. We all know when it’s coming. But December still has a habit of becoming a rush of shopping, decorating, visiting, cooking and trying to squeeze several weeks’ worth of socialising into a handful of days.For our dogs, ...

05/10/2026

“He knows this at home.”

I hear that quite a lot, and usually the owner is absolutely right.

The problem is that dogs aren’t always very good at taking something they’ve learned in one situation and automatically applying it somewhere else.

A down in the living room is not quite the same exercise as a down outside a café.

A recall across the garden is not the same as a recall when another dog is running past.

So once a behaviour is working, start moving it around. Try different rooms, the garden, somewhere quiet outside. Change your position, add a little more distance or duration, and gradually introduce distraction.

If it falls apart, make it easier again.

That doesn’t mean the dog has forgotten the behaviour. It usually means there’s another bit of training still to do.

If you find this kind of practical dog-training advice useful, follow Much Ado About Dogs for more.

19/09/2026

What are you ACTUALLY saying to your dog?

I often hear people describe their dog as stubborn or say that they “know perfectly well” what we are asking but are choosing not to do it.

Sometimes that may be true. But before blaming the dog, it is worth checking whether our communication is quite as clear as we think it is.

Clearer cues, calmer conversations and a dog who has a fair chance of understanding youThere is a familiar moment in dog training when an owner asks for a sit, waits, asks again, and then repeats the word with rather more conviction. By the third or fourth attempt the voice has become deeper, the ow...